Podcast: Purgatory, Missouri – EP 5 – Carnies

So far, our journey towards understanding what the place known as Purgatory, Missouri, might actually be has thrown up more questions than answers—many more. Well, with this latest installment, we have come to a point where we are starting to fill in some of the gaps, starting to get some explanations. Note the word “some.”

After the usual blend of Hammer House of Horror meets 50s radio play thriller, spoken introduction and the deliciously dystopian Americana theme tune, we find ourselves at a CCM, a “Compulsory Carnie Meeting,” reminding us that whatever this place is, it seems to run on a sort of totalitarian regime meets corporate model meets AA meeting…which sounds like most people’s idea of hell anyway!

“We are all trapped in amber” is how one Carnie describes the boredom of working this perpetual fairground of horrors. Confessions are made, and people struggle to remember who or what they were before. We get an insight into the various factions found here – the inner circle of Carnies, and their lower echelon fellow workers, the pinbots/bogeymen, and whatever “Blanca” (Crissy Guerrero) is. We also get an insight into acts of possible redemption on the part of the pinbots, a throwaway comment on the part of one of the Carnies, but something that feels as if it might be crucial to our whole understanding of the place. “38/Roger,” (Dave Foley), although a newbie, inexplicably (for now) fast-tracked into those elite circles, makes it obvious that he isn’t yet indoctrinated in the group’s ways and says some things that don’t go down too well with the powers-that-be.

Cut to “Blanca” and “Void” (Nathan Smythe) back at the Perimeter, the latter speaking the truth as he sees it (something that seems increasingly relevant to the world today, but that’s for another time). We learn more about the nature of the Perimeter, the social order, the Voids, their throwaway (often literally) purpose, and the fracturing nature of the whole place. Viva La Revolution? It does feel like that might be in the cards. The upshot of it all is that whatever this place is, it seems to echo the real world in so many ways.

There seems to be more scene-setting music this time, maybe not more, but more impactful. Stuart Pearson’s music is, as ever, the sonic backdrop that perfectly sets the tone, the essential musical colour for a non-visual performance.

We get answers, some more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fit into place, but we still can’t get a clear picture of the overall image. But we are getting there. It’s a show high on tease, slowly offering clues and answers, or just the suggestions of answers, but answers that don’t yet fit fully together, but you know that they will, it’s the direction of travel that we are on, Theseus’ thread that we will follow to its logical conclusion.

There are people we know and people we have yet to fathom out, areas that we feel familiar with, and regions still marked “here be dragons,” and, given the nature of the show, there just might be. There are many theories and still few solid facts.

Fun isn’t it?